Case Study: CPG Healthcare | Peer Insight

The healthcare division of a large CPG firm wants to explore how to develop and deliver a standalone service concept for patients and caregivers.

Key Activities Completed During this Project

Problem framing

Ethnographic research

Two dozen research interviews with customers

Customer journey mapping

Concept creation and refinement

Co-creation invention sessions with customers

Low-fidelity prototyping of the service experience

Service blueprinting and test planning

Investment pitching to leadership

Business case development

Revenue model exploration and testing

Opportunity

The healthcare division of a large CPG firm engaged Peer Insight to explore a nascent growth opportunity through an innovative service offering that delivered a patient-centered care experience to surgical patients. The opportunity in the market centered on rising infection rates within hospitals and looming reimbursement penalties for those with high numbers. Addressing associated pain points via a new-to-world service fit perfectly with the mission central to their health care product portfolio and could leverage relationships with their existing customer base (hospitals).

However, as a traditional consumer products company, a service offering was well outside of their existing institutional capabilities set. So, to create a service that was new to the world, we had to start with the two big assumptions that, if disconfirmed, would require a significant pivot in our thinking:

Who are the potential user(s) of the service?

What are their needs?

Approach

To get at these central questions, Peer Insight led a joint client + consultant team through ethnographic research with those potential users – at this point, doctors – and other key constituents in the ecosystem – patients, nurses, administrators, etc. Through this current state assessment, we started to uncover needs for all parties, not just doctors, and we made our first pivot to shift our focus to the patient, who was now emerging as an active participant in their care versus being on a proverbial conveyor belt.

After having dozens of discovery conversations with stakeholders, our joint client + Peer Insight team got together to gather insights, do sense-making, and create a few service concept possibilities, which we quickly turned into low-fidelity prototypes. From there, it was back to the hospital with those prototypes to co-create the concepts with doctors, nurses and patients, enabling rapid feedback and iteration. This let us quickly test concepts and features and hone in on a couple of high potential alternatives. We then evolved our concepts into higher-fidelity 3D prototypes for additional interactive co-creation research with key constituents and our team.

Acceleration

After three weeks of testing and iteration, the joint team reconvened to create our single super concept for year 1 implementation. That concept was mapped into a service blueprint, and we then charted a course for an eight-week, in-market alpha test with real users, enabled by hospital and other third party fulfillment partners. The in-market alpha test was a four-dimensional experience that engaged real patients in a delivered service experience over an eight-week period. The alpha test still focused entirely on testing key hypotheses (versus purely testing solution features and functionality), to solidify the foundations of a compelling user experience.

The service is currently being implemented through partnership with a UX design firm who developed a functional prototype of a digital application for patients.

in-hospital research with caregivers

Co-creation research sessions with patients and hospital administrators